Editor’s Blog on meeting for coffee with Ford’s Jon Gunn-Smith

HAD a very pleasant visit from Jon Gunn-Smith on Friday – and we headed over to the excellent Chino’s cafe opposite the Business Car Manager offices for a coffee and a chat.

Jon is Ford’s large car product manager. I met him on the recent Ford Mondeo test event and we discovered that he only lived a couple of miles down the road in Esher – so arranged to hook up for a coffee.

While some of the conversation was off the record, Jon did say that the company was gearing up for both new Focus – which is absolutely critical for Ford – and, as far as he was concerned, the low emission version of the Mondeo.

This Mondeo will be powered by a 1.6-litre diesel engine with emissions of just 114g/km: that means it will attract benefit in kind company car taxation at the rate of just 13% in the 2011/12 tax year; and 16% in the 2012/13 tax year.

“It’s really important to get CO2 emissions down,” Jon told me. “Such marginal things really do start to influence the decisions of business car users.”

Essentially, with many pay rises still frozen by SME firms, the best way to give yourself a pay rise is to choose a car that gives you a lower benefit in kind tax position.

For example my Audi A6 TDIe with its low emission 136PS engine emits only 139g/km CO2 putting it in the 20% company car tax category for 2011/12. If you choose the more powerful 170PS version with CO2 emissions of 149g/km that company car tax rate is 22% for the same period. Over a year, a 40% tax payer would save over £410 by choosing my version of the car.

If you’ve had your pay frozen, and no prospect of any imminent rise, then that’s a worthwhile amount of extra cash to have in the account at the end of the year. For the employer there’s additional savings on the cost of the car on the contract hire rental as well as on class 1AC National Insurance contributions.

Back to Jon.

“Such differences might sound small, but increasingly I think they will play a part. Will I continue with the £40 Sky subscription, for example? How essential is that to me? With the cost of fuel going up in January thanks to the fuel duty rise and the increase in VAT, family budgets are getting squeezed more and more,” Jon continued over his latte.

“So I think that continually chipping away at CO2 emissions is essential for company car drivers.”

We’ve yet to see the price of this new diesel Mondeo, but if it’s priced right, it could save business car drivers money. And, by the way, Jon assures me that the 1.6 engine won’t struggle if you were worried by size issues.

Ford is getting increasingly good at smaller sized turbo engines, whether diesel or petrol. The latest 1.6 EcoBoost petrol engine in the Mondeo estate was highly impressive: Low BIK petrol car for company car drivers.

I look forward to driving the new low emission Ford Mondeo.